Christine Negroni riffs on aviation and travel and whatever else inspires her to put words to page.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

From India to the Dreamliner Factory in Charleston a Message about Quality Control

Photo courtesy Times of India

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REFLECT NEW INFORMATION:

Boeing is confirming that a section of the underbelly of an Air India Dreamliner came off during landing, though spokesman Doug Alder will not say whether the plane is the newly delivered VT-ANO, as the Times of India reported, or a Dreamliner delivered ten months ago.

The panel "was recovered at the airport," Alder said in an email, reiterating what he said when the story was first reported that there was no safety of flight issue.

The event occurred on October 12. on a passenger-carrying flight from Delhi to Bangalore with 148 people on board, according to the paper. The identity of the aircraft is important because VT-ANO had been in the airline's possession for not yet a full week.

If the damage was on VT-ANO, that would be the
very same airplane that earlier last week was sitting in Charleston, South
Carolina, outside the (also brand spankin’ new) Dreamliner assembly facility
waiting for Air India to come and get it. That panel on that plane had been opened recently in Charleston, to perform a modification to the environmental control unit, a Boeing-ordered fix to all 89 of the airplanes, to drain a build up of moisture that was interfering with the cooling of electronics.

Air India has eight 787s. Most or all of which were put together in South
Carolina while the Dreamliners delivered to Norwegian, LOT Polish and United,
were assembled in Everett, Washington. (At some future date, we can revisit
the controversy over Boeing's decision to start shipping high-paying aerospace
jobs down to the lower-cost south. Boeing saw a union-free haven. Mechanics saw
an environment long on unemployment but short on workers with experience in the
highly complex and exacting field of airplane building. But as I said, that’s a
story for another day.)

If the skin came off VT-ANO, then a lot of folks are running around the North
Charleston plant collecting all the paperwork related to that work to find out just how the panel - which is attached with screws and
locking bolts - came free. The same can be said in Delhi, if the panel was disassembled at Air India. Clarification of just what plane this happened on is not forthcoming, though the Directorate General of Civil Aviation is said to be investigating.

An experienced airliner mechanic knowledgeable about the
Dreamliner suggested the only way the panel could have come off is if it was
put on with the wrong attachment bolts. With each part of the airplane
carefully mapped on engineering diagrams and the appropriate hardware placed
at the assembly station, it is hard to imagine how that could have happened.
Clearly though, something went amiss on this airplane. The follow on questions of course are; Just this panel? Just this airplane?

“If the bolt is too short the nut barely captures the threads.
It will tighten up but come loose quickly because of the pressure,” my source told me.

If you are wondering, as I was, how the plane made it half way around the world without losing this piece I was told that the plane is designed to
fly with 25 percent of fasteners missing.

"Even if they forgot to tighten the nuts, the panel
would not fall off. It would fall off if they put in screws that were too short," my contact told me.

As the one who does the household repairs at my home, I confess, sometimes I substitute whatever I can find lying around the work room for original parts. If it fits and holds, I figure that's good enough. This is a bad idea when attaching fuselage panels to airliners. Here's why.

“There is a locking feature at the end of the nut. For it to
work, the threads of the bolt have to protrude 2-3 threads,” my Dreamliner mechanic explained. “Put the torque gun on and it will click, it
will show that it (the nut on the screw) is tightened up.” But its not. Drum roll here.

It should not take too long to figure out what happened. Not so sure we can say the same about determining why it happened.

Earlier this month, the Charleston assembly plant boss Jack
Jones called workers together for an all hands meeting. Quality standards would
have to improve, he told them according to someone who was present.

He ticked off a list of the dissatisfied customers, Norwegian, LAN, Qatar. And of course Japan Airlines who gave a thumbs down to the Dreamliner and its associated nightmares when it opted to purchase Airbus A350s a few weeks ago. (Click here for a great story today on the politics behind the decision from Reuters.) These planes weren't made in South Carolina, they were built back in Washington where the experienced hands are turning the wrenches. (And where, someone forgot to replace filters in the engines on two LOT airliners, about which more here.)

Lasse Sandaker-Nielsen, a spokesperson for the airline would not confirm the figure but did say that as far as fuel efficiency is concerned the Dream is living up to Boeing's promises of twenty percent savings.

Jack Jones in Charleston in happier days

Until the U.S. government shutdown, inspectors with the Federal Aviation Administration were reviewing each and every airplane off the assembly line. I am told, they said they would not leave Charleston until the planes passed inspection with two or fewer write-ups. Instead the South Carolina 787s are garnering 20, 30 and 40 write-ups. "We're not getting better, we're getting worse," Jones reportedly told the workers.

From India, Qatar, Chile, Norway, Poland and Japan the chorus of complaints is getting louder. What will it take for Boeing to heed what they are saying about quality control?